the insignificant ramblings of a disturbed graphic designer
Monday, August 18, 2008
Free the Airwaves
Remember on old TVs how, when you used to switch from channel 5 to 7 (for example), there might be static on channel 6? Those unused spaces on the analog broadcast spectrum are called “white spaces.”
Currently more than half of the spectrum is unused. When TV broadcasters go fully digital-spectrum next year and discontinue their analog broadcasts altogether, there will be a lot more. A coalition including Google, Microsoft, Dell, and others, is asking the U.S. government to turn over white spaces to public use (broadcast spectrum is, after all, a legally recognized public resource). It could be used for better public access to wifi, Internet telephony, and many other things.
I predict this fight will get nasty when many other companies realize they stand to lose a lot too. Expect the traditional and cellular phone companies, for example, to form a similar coalition on the other side, lobbying Congress for strict licensing and fees which would effectively lock out public access the same way licensing has kept citizens from broadcasting their own TV or radio stations.
For more information, and to sign a petition, visit Free the Airwaves.
Posted by espd at 7:48 AM |
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Add search engines to your browser
If you're a Firefox user (or IE7 I'm told), you can search YouTube, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Amazon, IMDb, several dictionaries, and even the global Whois database directly from Firefox by installing simple add-on extensions.
"Search box add-ons" are not to be confused with "toolbars," which — while sometimes useful — generally add more functionality than just search, and also insert a new horizontal bar into your browser's chrome. I prefer to keep my Firefox chrome pretty clean and rarely use toolbars.
Many search box additions are available directly through Mozilla's Add-Ons section. Many other useful ones aren't listed on Mozilla.org, but they are available out on the Internet, if you know where to look for them. They can be pretty hard to locate sometimes, so here's a list of where to locate some of my favorites that I couldn't find on Mozilla.org:
Tip: By selecting "Manage Search Engines..." at the bottom of the pulldown (see screenshot), you can also organize the list so your more important sites appear at the top.
What's in your Firefox search bar? Got a good one to share? Let me know by leaving a comment.
Was this how-to tip helpful to you? Leave a comment. Or a joke.
Pixar – A Human Story of Computer Animation A long (101 minutes!) but really interesting panel discussion at the Computer History Museum featuring the guys who invented texture mapping and alpha channels back in the early 1970s. They would later do early computer graphics for some films you may have heard of (like the original Star Wars) and go on to found a little animation studio you also may have heard of: Pixar.
Am I Not Pretty Enough? I usually detest this sort of talent show crap, but these guys deserve props indeed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzashX3FglM
Top 5 update: Donnie Hoyle unmasked Back in March I told you about the hilarious "You Suck at Photoshop" tutorials by Donnie Hoyle. Time magazine last week revealed the creators of the series as Troy Hitch and Matt Bledsoe. www.time.com
Posted by espd at 7:02 AM |
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Thursday Top 5
Google Me, the movie Jim Killeen Googled his name and found there were Jim Killeens all around the world. So he traveled to meet some of them and made a documentary.
Grabb.it A group music blog anyone can contribute to. grabb.it
I want to see that! Every Monday, Ben and Katie review all the new movies. Even if they haven't seen them yet. iwtst.com
1,000 True Fans Ever heard the term "the long tail" and wondered what the hell they were talking about? Here's an article that posits that a person (an artist, a musician or even a blogger, for example) can make a living if they can reach a point where they have 1,000 true fans. www.kk.org/thetechnium/
Posted by espd at 8:05 PM |
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Friday, April 04, 2008
How to run multiple copies of (the same version of) Firefox
For the longest time, while using Firefox 1.x I was able to run two or more copies of the application at the same time. This was useful for partitioning my work and protecting it from being lost if there was a FF crash (which there were a lot of in the later Firefox 1.x days). If one instance crashed, the other would still keep chugging along. This was especially necessary because we didn't have Session Restore in back then.
When Firefox 2 came out, this capability was lost. I tried to figure out how to do it again by following several methods I saw mentioned on the the web, but none of them worked, and alas, I'm not nerdy enough to figure out why not. I'd always get a damn error message complaining that I'm not allowed to run multiple instances of the same app.
It didn't work even if you copied the app to a different folder and launched the copy. It didn't even matter if one was Firefox 2.1 and the other was Firefox 2.3.4. No work.
While you can run an old copy of Firefox 1.x at the same time as Firefox 2.x or even a beta copy of 3.x, you can't run two copies of Firefox 2.x on the same machine at the same time, not even if one is version 2.0 and the other is version 2.5.
An. Noy. Ing.
But, lo! I finally found a method that works. As you can see from the screenshot, I'm presently running three instances of the same version of Firefox on Mac OS X.
Here's how to do it:
First, Quit Firefox if it's running already.
Start Terminal and type in the directory path to your Firefox application. It'll probably be similar to mine below. Note that "espd" is my username, so yours will be different. "Firefox_dwOct.app" is what I've named my app, but yours will probably just be "Firefox". It must be followed by the rest: "/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin" is standard for a normal Mac OS X install but it could be possibly be different for you (probably not, though).
If you can't figure out the right path to the app's binary file (the "firefox-bin" part), then here's how to find it: In the Finder, open your Applications folder, find the Firefox icon, and right-click (or Control-click) to get the Contextual menu (pictured below), and select "Show Package Contents." That's how you see the files inside an application bundle.
Now, inside the Finder window that will open, you'll see a folder named "Contents." Double click it, and you'll see a few more icons, including a folder titled "MacOS." Open that one and look for the file called "firefox-bin", with an icon like a Terminal session (pictured below).
Now arrange your Terminal window and the Finder window so you can see them both, and simply drag the "firefox-bin" icon directly into the Terminal session after your username-prompt (pictured below), and it'll instantly fill in the correct path. OS X is pretty neat that way.
So once you've got the path to your Firefox app in Terminal, you'll need to change the example text "YourProfileName" to your actual profile name.
If you don't know your profile name, here's how you find it: In the Finder, navigate from your Home folder (usually your username, like mine in the screenshot below) to the folders "Library > Application Support > Firefox".
Inside the Firefox folder is your "Profiles" folder. You probably only have one profile inside, and it probably has a weird name like "65d7ghtn.default", although it might instead be called something like "qtgfxqc3.YourName".
That "YourName" part will actually be a profile name, not "YourName". You chose a name when you first installed Firefox way back in the Dark Ages, and you've probably never seen it since. Whether it's "YourName" or "Fred" or just "default", you can put that in where I've got "YourProfileName" in the example below.
Now just type the "-no-remote &" part, then hit your Return key and Firefox will launch the Profile Manager (pictured below). This is a part of Firefox most people never see, but it's handy. It's off by default, but the Terminal command "-P" turns it on.
Now you want to un-check the "Don't ask at startup" checkbox, because if you're going to use multiple profiles you want Firefox to launch the Profile Manager each time you start Firefox, so you can choose which profile to use.
If you only have one profile listed, at this point create a new one. Follow the dialog boxes and it'll step you through the process, then it'll launch the browser as normal.
Now go back to Terminal and copy and past the command again, this time using the other profile name you haven't initiated yet. A new Profile manager will launch, you can select the profile you haven't launched a browser for yet, and click the "Start Firefox" button.
Voila! Two instances of Firefox running, using two different profiles.
PS> I should note that it's the magic "-no-remote" Terminal command that allows you run two or more instances of an app. You can do it with many other apps too, if you like (not all will work, your results may vary).
My friends over at ZDNet have launched their redesigned website and it's looking great. I never used ZDNet that much before, but the new changes to the site make finding content and just browsing around a lot more pleasurable. I spent some time the other day watching some of the interesting videos in the "Green Enterprise" section.
Posted by espd at 2:05 PM |
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Thursday, March 06, 2008
Thursday Top 5+5
I've been busy so I didn't have time to post a Top 5 last week. So here's a double dose of distractions for you.
What if humanity disappeared? This Sunday, the National Geographic Channel premieres "Aftermath: Population Zero," which imagines what it would be like if humans suddenly disappeared from Earth (coincidentally, they chose Velma's birthday for the date on which human history ends). Pets will starve, dams will break, electricity will shut down and nuclear plants will eventually melt down. And that's just in the first few months; they continue to forecast out to 230 A.H. (after humans). Using CG and cleverly edited real film footage, National Geographic has created an altogether frightening and fascinating vision. Since we don't have cable Velma and I can't watch it, but I'll Netflix this someday if it gets released on DVD. There's an interactive timeline and several preview video clips on the web. channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/aftermath/
The Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music Legendary producer Don Was has a show on the new online video source My Damn Channel, and so far he's got interviews with and/or performances by Ozzy Osbourne, Slash and Duff from Guns 'N' Roses, Sass Jordan, Jill Sobule (performing in an LA furniture store!), Sweet Pea Atkinson, and Lori McKenna, along with some up-and-comers. The Ozzy interviews contain some of the most interesting questions Ozzy's gotten in years (in this way, Don Was could kick Bob Coburn's ass), and they even briefly discuss the long-forgotten duet Ozzy did with Madonna on Was (Not Was)'s 1983 album Born To Laugh at Tornadoes. www.mydamnchannel.com/explore.aspx?channel=59 I also liked this rock–reggae band — Common Sense: www.mydamnchannel.com/channel.aspx?episode=570
The trouble with Steve Jobs Fortune has named Apple number one on its 2008 list of America's Most Admired Companies. Among the magazine's coverage, editor at large Peter Elkind uncovers some facts behind Apple's stock backdating scandal and 2004 surgery that saved Steve Jobs from cancer. money.cnn.com/2008/ There's also a separate interview with Jobs: money.cnn.com/galleries/
Facebook and privacy Much has been made over the last year about Facebook's privacy policy and terms of service. I happen to think most of this sharing is benign, but there's no question that it could be used (as could nearly any information) for the wrong purposes. While this video's outline of corporate and government relationships to Facebook are a bit tenuous, it provides some interesting insights that all Facebook users should be aware of. www.albumoftheday.com/facebook/
Does Google have a Master Plan? As if the Facebook video wasn't enough, this video contend that Google is secretly cooperating with the CIA and collecting your personal information for purposes that are possibly more nefarious than just simply serving up relevant text ads. I'm not sure how much of this I buy, but I'll look into the allegations of Robert David Steele, the former CIA agent. The video, btw, is worth watching if only for the terrific design. masterplanthemovie.com
Posted by espd at 4:06 PM |
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Saturday, February 02, 2008
Is Apple improving its environmental record, or is it just spin?
Did anyone else notice that Steve Jobs actually made it a point, albeit briefly, to talk about Apple's environmental goals at his MacWorld keynote last month?
When I was checking out the specs for the new MacBook Air on the Apple website I was astonished to see on the Tech Specs page, a big, bold box labeled Environmental Status Report.
A short while later I went looking for Apple's page on their environmental standards, which I had seen last year but wasn't sure where to find it since they've redesigned their site in the meantime. I went to the home page of Apple.com and figured I'd have to click on "Site Map" and then look for the link there, but I was surprised to see an "Environment" link at the bottom of the home page, right next to "Job Opportunities."
It all made me wonder whether Apple is beginning to do a better job with their product designs, or whether it's just their marketing department that's doing a better job with spin.
Likewise, in 2005 the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) launched it's Bad Apple campaign to criticize, among other things, the non-ubgradeability of the iPod and Apple's reluctance to institute a take-back solution for electronics recycling. (SVTC's campaign was itself criticized in a 2006 article on Roughly Drafted.)
I've been wondering if these two watchdog groups had been following Apple's progress and what their take was. Alas, the SVTC's website search sucks and Google doesn't seem to have even spidered their content (!), so I didn't find much there, although it seems that SVTC is still pushing Apple for shareholder resolutions that would improve its computer take-back efforts.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace seems to have discontinued its Green My Apple campaign after Steve Jobs issued a very public pronouncement last spring on a page titled "A Greener Apple," wherein he described the company's plans to, among other things, phase out some of the worst chemicals found in CRT monitors. I thought this was a little bit disingenuous on Apple's part, however, since it had been clear for a while that Apple was phasing out CRTs for business and product design reasons, not environmental ones. Jobs' letter also signaled improvements in e-waste reduction via upgrades to its electronics take-back program.
In a statement about Jobs' letter, Greenpeace said, "It's not everything we asked for. Apple has declared a phase-out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufactures' pledge to phase them out by 2009... But while customers in the US will be able to return their Apple products for recycling knowing that their gear won't end up in the e-waste mountains of Asia and India, Apple isn't making that promise to anyone but customers in the USA. Elsewhere in the world, an Apple product today can still be tomorrow's e-waste. Other manufacturers offer worldwide takeback and recycling. Apple should too!" [Full article]
Greenpeace also issued a detailed analysis of Jobs' pronouncement last May. Almost a year later, though, they don't seem to have put out a follow-up yet. I hope they will.
I was leaving my job and had accumulated three-plus years of contacts, website bookmarks, emails, etc., that I wanted to keep and transfer to my home computer, but I didn't necessarily want to use the same apps at home that my company used. For example, Mac users in my office used Microsoft's Entourage (the Mac equivalent of Outlook) for address book, shared calendering, and email.
Despite two or three super-annoying bugs that Microsoft never fixed in the three-plus years I used it, I actually liked Entourage more than any Microsoft software I've used since the old System 9 days when the Mac version of Internet Explorer was the only really decent browser on the market for a few years (obviously this was before Safari, Netscape had been swallowed whole by AOL and was beginning to suck pretty bad, and Firefox hadn't even been invented).
But why would I splurge for Microsoft's Entourage at home when my Mac comes with three great free apps (Address Book, iCal, and Mail) that do fundamentally the same things Entourage does, and all work together too?
So I needed to figure out a way to sync data from the work computer with the home computer, while also switching from some apps to different ones. There were a lot of tips on the web about how to switch from Entourage to Address Book or how to go from Outlook to Entourage, but these tips all required that you were either doing this on one computer, or had the two computers in the same room.
I needed solutions that would work between work and home. It took me a few days of researching and experimenting, but I came up with some solutions that worked well.
Read on for solutions to these problems: Problem #1: Can I export my Entourage contacts and email? Problem #2: How do I get my IM contacts to my home computer? Problem #3: How do I sync that newly exported data from work to home? Problem #4: How can I take my web browser's bookmarks home? Problem #5: I don't want to lose all my web site passwords saved in my browser! Problem #6: How do I open Word documents at home? Problem #7: Can I consolidate my home and work iTunes libraries?
Problem #1: Can I export my Entourage contacts and email?
Entourage to Address Book This was easier than I expected. Entourage on OS X lets you export your contacts as vCards, which is a cross-platform text format (.vcf) that is recognized by almost any contact app (like Apple's Address Book). It's simple: In the Finder, make a new folder called vCards. In Entourage, select all your contacts, and just drag them all to the folder (it may take a couple minutes if you have a lot of contacts). Then, in Address Book, simply select File > Import > vCards... from the menu (see picture below), and navigate in the dialog box to the vCards folder you dumped your Entourage contacts into.
After that, I could sync my Address Book with .Mac to get them to the home computer. But more about that in a moment.
Entourage to Mail This bit was unexpectedly simple too. Similar to the previous scenario, if you just drag an Entourage email folder or your entire in-box from the program to the Finder, all the data gets exported and packaged into the popular .mbox format. It even includes attachments, much to my surprise.
After that, all you have to do is transfer all those .mbox files to your home computer, and if you're going to use Apple's own Mail app at home like me, you simply open Mail and select File > Import Mailboxes... from the menu (see picture below).
Next you'll see a dialog box named Import (see picture below), in which you'll want to select Other from the list and hit Continue. Then you just use the ensuing dialog box to navigate to the .mbox files on your hard drive and then Mail will churn through them all (it may take a while if you have a lot of email) and put them in a new folder titled "Import."
Problem #2: How do I get my IM contacts to my home computer?
I use the excellent, multi-service, open source Adium X at both work and home, but Adium stores some of its contact data locally. So if you've added a nickname to a contact to remember that, for example, pirate2am is Hilary, then you only have that notation on the one computer, and the next time pirate2am IMs you while you're on the other computer, you may not remember who that is (don't you hate having to ask somebody "Who are you?" on IM?).
So my solution concentrated on finding a way to export my contact list from Adium at work and then syncing it with my contact list at home. There's no built-in function for this, and sadly there's not even an export function in Adium (although the latter is on their development roadmap), so I couldn't just export a tab-delimited or CSV file to take home and import.
At the same time, I also had duplicate contacts in Adium and Address Book, but in the IM client you normally have little more than their username, their IM service (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.), and maybe an avatar. In Address Book, you obviously have a lot more fields. But if you're like me, for some people's entries you don't have their IM, you always just have that in your IM client, so why bother? And perhaps you want to capture their avatar from the IM client and copy it into Address Book's nifty picture field.
Doing a Google search brought me (eventually) to Adium Book, a little OS X AppleScript app made by a Brazilian programmer named Aurelio.
This little app worked great, looking at Adium X and Address Book at the same time, comparing records, and giving me a simple interface for resolving conflicts (see picture below) like duplicate names and/or differing data for the same name. It even let me copy avatars back and forth, and if I had two different ones for a single person, it let me choose which one to use, or to keep a different one in each app.
Now that I had all my IM contacts copied from Adium X to Address Book, I still needed to get them home. So it was time to sync using .Mac.
Problem #3: How do I sync that newly exported data from work to home?
I'd been avoiding getting a .Mac account for years, since I couldn't justify paying $99 a year for things that I can already do on my own website (e.g. web pages, blogging, webmail, etc.), or through other services that have more robust features (e.g. photo sharing, bookmark syncing, etc.).
But because I've avoided .Mac, I've never been able to take advantage of the easy-to-use sync features that are built into all Macs. Because I had a deadline by which I needed to have my work data backed up and transfered to my home Mac, I thought it was time to give .Mac a whirl. Plus I could take advantage of the 60-day free trial and accomplish everything I wanted to do, and then if I still didn't think .Mac was worth it, I could drop it before having to pay for a full year.
There are actually two or three features of .Mac that I really like, and that are difficult to reproduce using other services (and certainly not in the easy and built-in way that .Mac works). Those features are: 1) Sync, 2) iDisk, and 3) Back to My Mac. That last one is only available to Leopard users, so until I upgrade I can't use it. But in the meantime, the first two make .Mac worth a try, and I must admit that Sync works so effortlessly that I'd almost be willing to pay for .Mac just because of that.
With .Mac you can sync your Safari bookmarks, Address Book contacts, email, calendars, keychains, and more (Leopard adds Dashboard widgets too). I wish it also worked with Firefox bookmarks, but I have other methods for that, described later.
Once I signed up for the .Mac trial period, I could suddenly sync my Address Book at work (which remember now contains all my contacts from Entourage and all my IM contacts), to .Mac's servers, and then go home and sync .Mac with my local machine(s). Suddenly I have exact copies of all my contacts at home as well as at work, plus I've got them on the web with .Mac, so I can access them from almost anywhere.
Problem #4: How can I take my web browser's bookmarks home?
.Mac also syncs your Safari bookmarks, but I primarily use Firefox, so .Mac wasn't going to cut it in this regard. Luckily, it's extremely simple to export/back up your Firefox bookmarks. Just select Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks... from the menu (see picture below).
Firefox will bring up the Bookmarks Manager, in which you simply seelct File > Export... (see picture below), and you save the file as something like "Bookmarks_Firefox_January2008.html" on your hard drive. Then you move the file to your home computer, open the Bookmarks Manager in Firefox again, and select File > Import... from the menu.
There are some apps out there to help you resolve any duplicates, but that's a long, involved, and therefore separate tutorial, so I'm going to save that for another time. At least you now haven't lost all your bookmarks you collected on your computer at work.
Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, it's a pretty good idea to regularly export those bookmarks on your computer anyway, as a backup. I keep several years' worth of them in my Documents folder, all dated and organized by browser. I lost several years worth of bookmarks once in a hard browser crash, and I'm not going to risk that ever again.
Problem #5: I don't want to lose all my web site passwords saved in my browser!
If you're a Firefox user like me, you probably like Firefox's useful ability to store usernames and passwords at the many sites you have to log into every day, week, or month. If you're not using it, you can turn it on from the Firefox > Preferences... menu, then click on the Security icon/tab in the prefs dialog box that comes up (see picture below).
Obviously this functionality is only viable if you're not on a shared computer, and if you are using Apple's Keychain to securely store your master password. Otherwise, other people will see your username/password combination when they go to log in to Yahoo! or places like that.
I was switching from the work computer to full-time on the home computer, and I dreaded having to remember — and re-type! — all those passwords that I regularly used on the work computer. I searched in vain for an app that would export these from Firefox (which does not support this function itself, although it should) so I finally had to bite the bullet and type them all into a text file (you can't even drag and drop them out of FF's list!) which I then transferred to home and will have to re-enter.
Update: I don't know how I overlooked the Firefox extension Password Exporter when I was first looking for a solution. I've installed it now, but haven't tried it out yet. The documentation leads me to believe it can import as well, which would by useful.
Problem #6: How do I open Word documents at home?
This wasn't actually a problem for me, since I've avoided Word for years, and there are already plenty of alternatives to Word on the Mac, and even several web apps you can use instead. But for sake of completeness and because I predict there will be people who find this article who do use Word a lot, I'll mention some solutions.
TextEdit This app is free and comes installed on every Mac with OS X, but most people don't realize it opens Word's .doc format. I use TextEdit for almost every simple text document I need to write that will eventually get printed or made into a PDF. You can drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste images into it with ease, and I think you can even drag-and-drop tabular data from other apps into it (I never need this, however, so I'm not positive). It lacks many of the vast "features" that make Word the worst of the bloatware in my book, but I never have any need for those features, and if I need to do complex layouts, why in hell would I use a text editor anyway? That's what layout programs like InDesign or Illustrator are for.
Oh, and a word to the wise about Word's .doc files: On a Mac (and on PCs too, for that matter), there's never any reason to save anything as a .doc file, which is proprietary to Microsoft and just means that anyone you send the document to is almost always going to need Word to open it. The simple alternative, which supports 99% of the functionality anyone will ever need in a .doc file, is the .rtf format. Just save everything as .rtf and the whole world will love you.
xPad I've been using this little notepad app for years and I can't live without it. xPad does everything TextEdit above does, but it also auto-saves and adds an extremely handy tray to the side of your document window and keeps all your docs listed there, making organizing your frequently-accessed text documents incredibly easier. I keep to-do lists in there, five or ten half-written blog entries at any given time (I wrote this tutorial in it, screengrabs and all!), drafts of emails, link lists, and much more (see picture below).
Problem #7: Can I consolidate my home and work iTunes libraries?
Now this was a big one. I worked in a place where lots of music was available (Download.com has over 100,000 free MP3s, for example), and I occasionally happened upon treasure troves on the net that I was all too happy to queue up for download on the fast connection at work.
Eventually I had amassed quite a collection of songs that I didn't have at home, and when it came time to leave my job I certainly didn't want to lose those. It would be simple enough to copy them all to a hard drive, bring them home, and then drag them into iTunes to import. But I'd spent a lot of time building playlists to listen to at work, not to mention rating most of those songs. I wanted to retain that metadata!
I saw two vendors at MacWorld Expo who offered a potential solution, and I picked SuperSync because it seemed to offer a lot more robust features, even if the interface on the other one was a little cleaner and easier to understand. Plus I met the actual developer there at the booth, hawking SuperSync, so I was able to spend 10 or 15 minutes asking him "Will it do..." and "What if..." until I was satisfied that it'd probably work great for me.
That said, I purchased SuperSync but I haven't actually had time to try it yet, so I'll have to update this post after I've given it a whirl. ; )
Conclusion I hope some of these tips come in helpful to you. I'd like to hear from you if they do. Or, if you have any additions, corrections, or alternative methods you'd like to share, please post them in a comment below, or write them up for your own site and post a link here.
Regardless of the potential for copyright abuses by P2P, BitTorrent and digital advocacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) make the valid point that Comcast, as the nation's second-largest internet service provider, has a duopoly on bandwidth and therefore a stranglehold on a public utility that shouldn't be subject to the whims of a single corporation.
This is core to the recent concerns raised about so-called "net neutrality," and SF Weekly's piece is a good primer. The EFF also has some additional information on Comcast's abuses of their subscribers.
Microsoft's Seadragon/Photosynth Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft Live Labs demos Seadragon/Photosynth, some incredible software that's capable of assembling static photos into zoomable, navigatable spaces.
Robots playing Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" "LEV the thereminbot and his newly-built pal thumpbot play "Crazy" with help from a 20-year-old MT32 synthesizer. OK, Lev's a bit out of tune, but hey, ROBOTS..." www.youtube.com/watch?v=19RJEnNUg1I
"BBS: The Documentary" Anybody remember dialing up to BBSes before the Web? I guess everybody needs a hobby: Some guy spent four years filming a documentary about BBSes. www.bbsdocumentary.com
"Planet Earth" This is a spectacular series from the BBC. I will second my friend Olya's recommendation too: Get the BBC version featuring David Atetnborough as narrator, not the Discovery Channel version featuring Sigourney Weaver. I mean, I like Sigourney and all, but she ain't no Attenborough. It's available in HD btw. www.amazon.com/Planet-Earth-Complete-BBC-DVD/dp/B000MRAAJW
The Green I wish I had cable so I could watch programming like this. In a poll ten years ago, almost 80% of Americans said they'd call themselves environmentalists. Yet most people do very little to make the environment better or raise awareness. Programming like this makes me optimistic. www.sundancechannel.com
This marks a significant shift for CNET's tech offerings, since the majority of TechTracker's visitors are Mac users.
While CNET has covered Apple a lot on News.com and CNET.com, their Reviews section has historically been so-so at best with regard to Mac hardware, and Download.com's Mac software offerings have always been pretty lackluster compared to the competition. This acquisition could mark a turning point.
The announcement of the acquisition has garnered a lot of negative comments regarding CNET on the VersionTracker Blog. It's a little sad to see how much general ill-will the commenters have for CNET. More sad, however, is that the majority of the commenters are critically misinformed. *sigh* Either way, it looks like CNET has a long way to go to fix a reputation in the Mac market.
"The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%." – Douglas Adams
UPDATE: I just noticed that TechTracker also has a little site called GreenTracker.com, created "to institute and promote sustainable practices and reduce TechTracker’s overall energy imprint." I hope it will survive the changes the CNET purchase will bring.
Posted by espd at 5:45 PM |
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Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Maker Faire and the Alternative Press Expo (part 1)
Two of the coolest things I went to in the past few months were the Maker Faire and the Alternative Press Expo. Take my advice: Put both of these events on your calendar for next year!
The Maker Faire is a big fair for DIY gadget enthusiasts. There were some great things to see, including a guy who figured out how to made his own Segway and a massive city made entirely of Legos. But I'll let this CNET Crave video do the talking.
At the Alternative Press Expo I bought a big stack of comics, books, graphic novels, and artwork. I missed this event last year and I'm really glad I got to go this year. It was fantastic and very inspiring. One of the best parts is that, unlike the bigger Wondercon at Moscone, most of the tables are manned (personed?) by the artists themselves. So I ended up seeing my old friend Lloyd Dangle of Troubletown fame (a comic you've probably seen in your local alternative newsweekly), and met a bunch of other fantastic artists. Oh, and I also went to the panel featuring Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of the Scott Pilgrim series that I enjoyed so much last year.
The stuff I got this year
"God Made Dirt, and Dirt Don't Hurt" A really cool DVD and booklet of awesome artwork by David Lee and the Triplewide Design Collective. www.triplewide.net
Restitution Press An awesome silkscreened booklet by the guys at Restitution Press, and a signed print by one of the artists, Ryan Graff. www.RestitutionPress.com Their domain seems to have been recently taken over by a newspaper, but their MySpace page (sorry) is still up. You can also see some pictures of their work in this Flickr set.
"Tea Club" Signed by the artist, Phuong-Mai Bui-Quang (a.k.a. PMBQ). Plus a custom PMBQ illustration of a panda wearing headphones and eating toast (also signed). www.tea-club.net
"Lava Punch: First Launch" I bought the zine from Bay Area artist Jillian Ogle, who also did a custom illustration inside it for me. www.soylentworks.com
Scott Pilgrim I got Bryan Lee O'Malley to sign my copies of "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life" and "Lost at Sea." Scott Pilgrim was my favorite find in the past couple years. It's hilarious. But I fully expect the series to take forever to wrap up, since the third book was delayed by many months, and I just get a sense from O'Malley that getting things done is, for him, kind of like pulling teeth. www.scottpilgrim.com
Troubletown Lloyd Dangle, who I first met around fifteen years ago during my volunteer time with the Graphic Artists Guild's NorCal Chapter, signed copies of his Troubletown books "Told You So" and "Funky Hipster Trash." www.troubletown.com
Optic Nerve I got a good deal on Adrian Tomine's "Optic Nerve" issues 1-7 and 9-11 (I have no idea why they didn't have #8). www.drawnandquarterly.com
"Wet Moon 2: Unseen Feet" I'd bought the first book by Ross Campbell a year ago or so, and the second one just came out recently. A couple freebies came with "Wet Moon": "The Damned" by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, and "Maintenance" by Jim Massey and Robbi Rodriguez. www.greenoblivion.com/wetmoon.html
Sean Seamus McWhinny Velma got two comics: "Diary of a Catering Whore" and "Head Trip: by Sean Seamus McWhinny. www.seanseamus.com
"Runoff" I bought a three-book series called "Runoff" from an artist named Tom Manning (signed). I read the first one on my trip to Boston, and it was really good. I'm taking the other two to Missouri next week. Apparently the director of "Pan's Labyrinth" is considering making a movie from the comics. www.robotsandmonkeys.com
"The ACME Novelty Library: Volume 17" I love Chris Ware's work. So I finally bought this. quimby.gnus.org/warehouse
"Fleet Street Scandal: Volume One" Artists Kevin Dart and Chris Turnham both signed this book for me, plus a print of Kevin's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" artwork. This book is swaaaank. www.fleetstreetscandal.com
Monster Sex A set of "Monster Sex" cards/prints by the splendid illustrator Jen Wang. I should've gotten her to sign the cool red envelope they come in, but she seemed pretty busy with other customers and I was on a schedule by that point, hurriedly trying to see the entire last aisle quickly because Velma was waiting to leave. www.jenwang.net
That's all just the stuff I bought. You should see the stack of postcards and samples I have! In the next installment Part 2 below, I'll feature even more cool art.
Part 2: The stuff I saw
Update June 2008: Okay, I've had this list for a year and never set aside enough time to grab some images for it, but today I decided it was finally time. Here are the other artists and things I saw at APE 2007. I'm looking forward to APE 2008, coming this fall.
Daniel M. Davis An Arizona artist with two books of cute monster illustrations and a website with lots of good tips for other cartoonists and self-publishers. www.SteamCrow.com
Pandoras Trunk A cooperative art boutique and gallery in the Haight. Artist Nome Edonna's work pictured here. www.PandorasTrunk.com
Cartoonists With Attitude A group of social commentary and political cartoonists. Barry Deutsch is one of the contributors, whose Hereville webcomic is pictured above ("Possibly the best comic about a troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl you'll read all week."). www.CartoonistsWithAttitude.org
Masheka Wood A Brooklyn, NY, comic artist who debuted his first book, "Deep Doodle," at the expo. www.WhatMashekaDid.com
A Comic a Day A blog that reviews a new issue of a different comic book series every day. AComicADay.blogspot.com
Michael Paulus Interesting artist who works in myriad media. You may have seen his series of cartoon character skeletons. www.michaelpaulus.com/gallery
Ben Walker I really like his style, and his site's pretty cool too. www.benwalkerart.com
Posted by espd at 1:15 PM |
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Friday, January 12, 2007
Designing for actual browser sizes
Thomas Baekdal has published a report that fairly definitively puts to rest the notion that there are a lot of people still using 800x600 as their monitor size and therefore that websites should be narrower than 800 pixels.
I've been saying for more than three years that the data show that 1024x768 has been the norm both worldwide and in North America, and the number of people using that resolution has not surprisingly increased a great deal in those three years. Actually, there are a lot of people using much larger monitor resolutions these days.
The report is will researched, and the user types and geographical breakdown is broad, although I wish there was a slightly larger number of actual domains that were used for testing. But at least the type of sites used — primarily fashion sites for teens, men, and women — would presumably cover a fairly accurate and broad age range.
Posted by espd at 8:00 PM |
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Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Apple Boot Camp desktops
In honor of Apple's announcement today that Leopard will allow users to dual-boot OS X and Windows, and the beta release of Boot Camp, I made a couple desktop backgrounds for anyone who'd like them.
Remember on old TVs how, when you used to switch from channel 5 to 7 (for example), there might be static on channel 6? Those unused spaces on the analog broadcast spectrum are called “white spaces.”
If you're a 
Likewise, in 2005 the 
